


Silence and Static

by avearia



Category: Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Depression, Drabble, Gen, Repression, Survival Horror, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 05:37:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21248312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avearia/pseuds/avearia
Summary: God. She hates the static.





	Silence and Static

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of a brainstorm/freewrite. I was trying out the concept of "Laura goes back to Silent Hill". That story never got finished, but this snippet felt... good. Charged and atmospheric. 
> 
> It's also kinda vague, so even though it's written with Laura in mind, it can be applied to any number of people, really. I guess I liked the way it turned out.
> 
> Comments and concrit welcome.

**Silence and Static**

** _— _ **

The static.

The _static. _

It was so… hard to think when… when she was alone.

God. _The_ _static. _

It made the puzzles harder. It made planning her next move harder. Hell, it made everything harder; even opening doors and picking up bullets was hard when the incessant hissing noise clouded over her mind.

It was so loud—the static. She couldn't think. She was a zombie, ambling to and fro, acting on survival instinct. Walk up the stairs. Try all the doorknobs. Shoot at the monsters.

There was something about this place. A long lost familiarity, maybe, that just grazed her conscious mind, like a half remembered melody clinging to the tip of her tongue.

—_Baby I've been here before, I've seen this room, I've walked this floor— _

—_you know I used to live alone, before I knew you—_

But like a song on the radio, the static interrupts it, hissing and spitting and raking at her ears. The static takes the memory and warps it, scatters it to the shadows, and she's left reaching for it as it fades away.

Maybe she shouldn't be reaching. Maybe she shouldn't be trying to _remember_.

Her mind recognizes this fact, each time she's blocked by the static, lost in the fog, stuck on this side of a locked door. Maybe these things are keeping her out for a _reason. _

The blood on the floor, the rust on the bars, the monsters rearing their heads—this place is such a terrible hellpit, maybe the memory should stay out of reach.

Sometimes, the static is a comforting thing. It fills her mind, gentle, cradling it like the white mist that curls around the empty town. It distracts her, deafens her, so she cannot hear the unsettling sounds nearby: the screams. The roars. And sometimes, most terrifying of all: the silence.

_The silence… _

As much as she hates the static, she loathes the terrifying silence that comes when it's gone. When she kills a monster, and the static _vanishes_, leaving her in a moment of sharp, terrifying clarity; when she is standing over a bleeding, human-esque monster, her heart pumping, a splintered plank in hand—she realizes in horror what kind of extreme violence she is capable of while in that mindless state.

Horror. Disgust and horror. And self loathing—

Then more monsters come, and the static returns. A comforting static, so she does not have to think about what she has done.

Her mind cannot torture her if it's clouded over with static.

So when the static returns, only a part of her mourns—the part of her that remembers when the world used to be filled with music.

So this is the world now? Silence and static?

_God. _

She _hates_ the static.


End file.
